Between 18 months to two years from now the new
pipeline from our region to Ceyhan will be ready, Ashti
Hawrami, the Kurdish Regional Governments natural
resources minister, told reporters at an energy conference in
Istanbul.

A new pipeline running from Iraqi Kurdistan to Turkey would
bypass Baghdad, with which the KRG is embroiled in disputes
over export revenue, and require Turkeys approval. No one
at the Turkish energy ministry including Minister Taner Yildiz
was immediately available to comment when calls were placed to
their offices.

Kurdistan will complete a 40 km line by year end that will
link to Iraqs main export pipeline extending from Kirkuk
to Ceyhan. With a capacity of 300,000 bpd, it wont meet
export needs, he said.

Kurdistan, whose economy has boomed with oil exploration
since Saddam Husseins ouster in 2003, expects exports to
soar more than 40-fold to 2 MMbpd by 2020 after the pipeline
network is completed. Producers including Genel Energy, the
regions largest, are shipping oil on trucks through
Turkey and Iran to international buyers, Hawrami said.

Rising Exports

Mehmet Sepil, president of Genel Energy, said at the same
conference that the 40 km pipeline from Dohuk to Fishkabur on
the Turkish border will carry 200,000 bpd from its Tawke and
Taq Taq fields and the remainder from other producers.

The main line, controlled by the Iraqi central government,
needs maintenance before it can reach full
capacity of as much as 1.6 MMbpd after years of disuse because
of UN sanctions against Husseins regime.

The Kurdish region, which exports 30,000 to 50,000 bpd of
Genel Energy crude by truck to Turkey, plans to increase
shipments to 1 MMbpd by the end of 2015 and 2 MMbpd by 2020
once the pipeline network is operational, Hawrami said.

The Kurdish regions oil-production capacity will rise
to 400,000 bpd by the end of this year from 300,000 bpd now,
Hawrami said.

KRG also plans to start shipping natural gas to Turkey,
where demand will probably grow 10 % to 48 bcm this year, from
2016 or 2017 at an annual rate of 10 bcm, Hawrami said.
Turkey is a very important market for our gas and a very
important corridor for our energy.

KRG will set up its own metering system near Fishkabur to
monitor oil flow once the Dohuk-Fishkabur pipeline is
operational, Hawrami said.

Have your say

All comments are subject to editorial review.
All fields are compulsory.